Editorial Policy

PuneTech is a for-the-community, non-commercial site, with an intention to keep technology professionals in Pune informed of interesting technologies, events, companies, user groups, organizations, mailing lists, and people in, or related to Pune. A lot of the content that is put up on PuneTech actually comes from other sources, and is often a cut-n-paste job, if not a direct copy (with permission). Thus, a lot of the value that PuneTech provides is in the selection of the content, and the editorial opinions and biases that we introduce in the process.

This note lays out our editorial policy to help the community understand what goes up on the site, and why:

PuneTech does not accept any payments or favors (monetary or otherwise) from any body, for any reason. All content on PuneTech is there because we feel that it needs to be there, and is in keeping with the purpose and the spirit of the site.

PuneTech strives hard to be free of vested interests. With precisely that in mind, right from the first day, we’ve always made it clear that PuneTech is not monetized in any way, and it does not provide any direct revenues, or indeed any direct monetary benefit to anybody associated with PuneTech. (For example, we don’t promote our own companies, and before promoting, or featuring our friends or their companies, we try very hard to ensure that we use the same criteria for judging them as we use for everybody else. And thankfully, our friends all respect this fact.)

However, PuneTech is not objective. We believe in evaluating the world around us and making our opinions known. We strongly believe that our opinions have value, and that our readers value our opinions. All PuneTech posts will always reflect the opinions of the authors (at least those opinions that we feel are worth publicizing to the rest of the world).

PuneTech often has posts that promote a certain company, event or person. In fact, it can be argued that all the posts on PuneTech are promoting something or someone. When we write about a company, we are essentially promoting it, and implicitly saying that the company is good enough to feature on PuneTech. When we write about an upcoming event, we are promoting the event, and essentially saying that we feel this event will be good, and worth attending. When we interview a person, or otherwise write about him/her, we are promoting that person, and saying here is a person that you should know.

We welcome and encourage opposing points of view in the comments. We usually approve all such comments, as long as they are in keeping with the PuneTech comments policy. Occasionally, we do delete comments that violate our policy, so please read the comments policy carefully to get an idea of what is not allowed.

Note: the PuneTech wiki is an open wiki that anybody can add to, and edit. Any content that anybody puts up there will usually be left there, as long as it is relevant to Pune, and relevant to technology, and is not illegal in some way. Note, however, that we, or someone else, might edit the content to make it more useful and usable.

In contrast, all content goes up on the the PuneTech blog (i.e. content which goes up on the front page, and to all PuneTech subscribers) is controlled by the PuneTech editor (currently Navin Kabra, with help from Amit Paranjape, and also some other friends of PuneTech). These are the rough guidelines currently used in determining what is appropriate for the front page:

Company profiles for interesting companies. Service companies are boring – unless the service happens to be something unique. Product companies are more interesting, especially if the product is technologically interesting, or has some aspect that is innovative. Or the product or service is itself useful for the tech community Pune.

Interviews of interesting tech people. Guidelines here are similar to that for company profiles – the person must be working on something that is technologically interesting, or innovative, or unique in some way, or useful to the tech community in Pune.

Events: The event must be in Pune, and should be related to technology. By and large, we try to focus on events that are free, or have a nominal fee. In general, we will not feature commercial events (i.e. those which have a hefty registration fee), unless we feel that the content is especially interesting, and the price especially reasonable. We usually don’t feature information about paid training programs. These days, there are so many tech events in Pune, that we have started being selective about featuring only the more interesting events on our front page – all other events that fit our criteria are posted on the PuneTech calendar. Note: the PuneTech calendar, like the PuneTech wiki, is a by-the-community calendar. Anyone is free to add events to the calendar.

PuneTech does not post job requirements. We are constantly asked about unpaid or paid job postings, but we feel that having job postings on PuneTech would distract from the primary purpose of the site. Note, however: if somebody writes a long, detailed and interesting article for PuneTech about the technology domain that their company is working in, one that would be of wider general interest to the readers of PuneTech, then, at the end of the article, we allow a short pitch about the company, and that can include a description of the kind of people they’re looking to hire. We feel that is a fair trade-off.

A few things to note:

These editorial guidelines have evolved over time, and will continue to evolve. Thus, it is possible that some article that featured on the PuneTech front page in the page violates one of these guidelines. The most likely reason would be that that guideline did not exist a the time the article was posted.

It is also possible that we make mistakes and violate our own guidelines. When you feel that such a mistake has happened, please point it out to us publicly (as a comment on the post). That will give us a chance to explain our choice to you and to everyone else, or to apologize, and learn from the mistakes.

If you can think of additions/modifications to the guidelines, please let us know.